[French Travel Report: Part 4] Are You going to buy a Premier Access Ultimate or a Premier Access One ?

Is Premier Access Ultimate Worth the Price?

Bonjour!

This time, I’d like to take a closer look at the “Premier Access Ultimate” (hereafter, “Ultimate”) that we purchased at Disneyland Paris, and examine whether it was really worth the cost.

Ultimate is a paid option that significantly reduces waiting time for especially popular attractions. In my experience, it cut the waiting time down to about 0 to 10 minutes. However, you cannot use it multiple times for the same attraction.

* The regular queue for Crush’s Coaster, 12 minutes after Extra Magic Hours began. So packed!

* The queue for Ratatouille: The Adventure. The line on the left is for Premier Access, while the long line on the right is the regular queue. (By the way, the one in the middle labeled “Single Rider” is a special lane for solo guests.) We just waited for 10 minutes by using Ultimate while the waiting time for regular customers was 50 minutes.
The Single Rider lane is used to fill empty seats by splitting up groups. Depending on the attraction and the time of day, the wait time can vary greatly, but in our case, we sometimes got on as quickly as with Premier Access.

Did We Really Need Ultimate?

To be honest, our conclusion was: “We didn’t really need.”

First of all, the “Extra Magic Hours”, a special perk for Disneyland Hotel guests, was extremely useful. It allows you to enter the park one hour before official opening(9:30), giving you the chance to ride one or two major attractions during that time. (In our case, we got a bit lost at first and couldn’t take full advantage…)

Even without purchasing Ultimate, you can buy “Premier Access One” for individual attractions. Ultimate does help you avoid the risk of unstable Wi-Fi or connectivity issues on the day of your visit, but from a purely cost perspective, individual purchases would have been much cheaper.

What We Actually Used Ultimate For

Here are the four attractions where we used Ultimate on the 1st day of the visit:

Ratatouille: The Adventure [€12]
Cars Road Trip [€5]
Spider-Man W.E.B. Adventure [€13] (for my wife only)
Avengers Assemble: Flight Force [€9] (for my wife only)

(The prices in square brackets are for Premier Access One, which vary depending on crowd levels.)

The amount we paid for Ultimate was €330 for two persons (prices seem to vary by date).

If we had gone with Premier Access One, my total would have been €17, while my wife’s would have been €39. In our case, Ultimate clearly wasn’t necessary.

In Summary: Who Should Consider Ultimate?

Ultimate is best suited for people who:

Want to ride a high number of Premier Access attractions across both parks in just one day
Don’t care about the cost and simply want to minimize waiting time
Find it troublesome to purchase Premier Access One individually for each ride

I hope this helps you decide based on your own travel style and goals.

Until next time—Au revoir!